[Dnsmasq-discuss] Bad Host Request error when using dnsmaq to resolve hostnames on a browser

[Grant D. Vallance]

Hello,

I am sorry to bother the list, but I am having trouble sorting out an 
issue using dnsmasq to resolve hostnames via a browser on my LAN. (The 
error "Bad Host Request" comes up when using IE and Firefox on an XP box 
and on Firefox on a Fedora box.)

What I want to do is either type in a FQDN or alias into my browser to 
bring up various hosts -- servers and routers etc. So rather than type 
in 192.168.0.100 to access one of my routers I want to type in either: 
thorin or thorin.home.abapere.com However, when I do this I get "Bad 
Host Request"

I am a relatively new to networking so I do apologise if I have missed 
out something obvious ... And I have looked through the documentation, 
the list, and googled extensively, but to no avail.

dnsmasq is set up on a CentOS 5.2 box. It is on Gandalf (192.168.0.20). 
I am running version 2.47.

The service is running fine.

The /etc/hosts looks like this:

# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
::1 localhost6.localdomain6 localhost6
192.168.0.20 argonath.home.abapere.com
192.168.0.10 gandalf.home.abapere.com gandalf
192.168.0.100 thorin.home.abapere.com thorin
[plus the other remaining boxes on the network filled out as above with 
different names and IP addresses]

/etc/dnsmasq.conf is what ships with dnsmasq with the following 
uncomments, alterations:

bogus-priv
expand-hosts
domain=home.abapere.com
dhcp-range=192.168.0.200,192.168.0.205,12h

The DHCP server works well.

I can use nslookup both under Linux and Windows XP and get the correct 
results.

I can also use ping in both Linux and Windows (although in Windows I 
have to add a full-stop at the end of the alias). E.g. in Linux ping 
thorin OR/ ping thorin.home.abapere.com works beautifully.

For example, on a Fedora 9 box (Bilbo), if I type in:
$ nslookup gandalf

I get:
Server:        192.168.0.20
Address:      192.168.0.20#53

Name:         gandalf
Address:      192.168.20

Which is correct.

Or if I type in:
nslookup frodo

I get:
Server:        192.168.0.20
Address:      192.168.0.20#53

Name:         frodo
Address:      192.168.111

Which is also correct. And so on ...

Is there anything obvious I have missed?

Why would everything work using command line tools like nslookup and 
ping but not with the browser?

Thank you very much for your help.

Regards,

Grant D. Vallance